In defense of the World Series

Some people may not like this year’s World Series matchup between the Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals. As long as you’ve got a good reason for this sentiment, that’s OK. Say you don’t like Dallas teams and you don’t like the Cardinals’ infamously obsessive manager, Tony La Russa. That would be a valid reason not to watch.

But unfortunately I suspect a lot of people are avoiding the World Series because there isn’t a “big-market” East Coast team involved this year. And frankly, that’s kind of stupid as reasons go. Yes it is true the Yankees are not in the World Series this year. Nor are the Philadelphia Phillies or the New York Mets or the Boston Red Sox. Yankees/Phillies/Mets/Red Sox fans, please accept my sympathies on your team not making it this far into October. Better luck next year.

But to say that you’ll only watch the World Series if these teams are involved and to dismiss the Rangers, who play in the 50th-largest city in the United States, Arlington, and about halfway between the fifth largest city in the country, Dallas, and the 16th largest city in the country, Fort Worth, or the Cardinals, who play in the 58th largest city in the country, St. Louis, as “small-market” teams is more than a little condescending.

This past February, the Super Bowl pitted a team from Green Bay, Wisconsin, home to barely over 104,000 people against a team from Pittsburgh, whose population is hundreds of thousands less than that of Philadelphia. And you know what? I’m willing to bet that most of the people on this campus watched at least a little of that game, either up on the big screens in Emerson Suites, in the dorms or at a friend’s apartment or house. Granted, the Super Bowl is just one game while the World Series consists of four to seven games and the Super Bowl is more famous for its commercials.

But unless you wrinkled your nose and refused to watch the Super Bowl when you realized the “small town” Packers and Steelers would be playing in the Super Bowl instead of the Chicago Bears and New York Jets, you look kind of ridiculous refusing to watch a Rangers-San Francisco Giants or Rangers-Cardinals World Series.